Feel free to share your feedback about version 0.0.6 here
A turn based single player asymmetric game where player take control of an ancient one and manipulate the world · By
Right now it is very barebones, but it is a 0.0.6 alpha so it is to be expected. There are a lot of things that happen on the screen that the player cannot affect at all (characters can own city districts for example, but the player cannot order a character to take or cede control of one such districts directly or indirectly).
Out of several games, I have been able to win only 2. The other I did not lose, however I was rendered unable to reach a conclusion due to rebellions spiraling out of control. In fact, it seems right now there is no way for a city to go back to stable once a rebellion (beginning at 10 unrest) sets in. I have had a city go +125 unrest and into negative population, but otherwise no change - the rebellion keeps on going strong.
I am not exactly sure how the resource system works, but right now it appears that the capital is almost always on fertile grounds and/or rich, and cities with money seem to buy the others' food even when there is no need, leading to starvation and the unrest spirals I spoke before.
Investigators right now are utterly ineffectual. While I do appreciate it when I can convert them to my side, at the moment the challenge seems to be more about winning before rebellions can start.
Not much else to say at the moment, it is possible to play the game from start to finish but there is little to do (and yet that is more than we ever had of TWS, so props to you).
First of all, thank you for feedback! I want to stress everyone with interest in this kind of project to provide feedback like you, it's very important for me in order to keep project running and also for motivation!
Like you said, this is a prototype, so only basic gameplay elements are present and I have to keep calm and don't add too much stuff. I've said in bay12 forum thread, my goal for this project is to create a working gameplay with base mechanics, test them with players interested in genre and after that expand it, maybe in a more visually compelling tecnology.
After "living cities" update, there is a lot going on on npc side: they can gather resources, get followers, solve quests and this happens every turn, on every city. Almost every players reported that this simulation (more a board game right now) produce a lot of informations to follow. This is a choice I've made to create a "living world" where npc acts and follows their directions and if a player is a god, how much he can affect the world? Right now only indirectly: you can "force" a npc to follow your "calling" and search for lost knowledge or manipulate him to work over relationship. Maybe you miss the relationship manipulation, on actor panel: you can see currently selected npc's relationship with other city npcs and which kind of relation they had, like for example "HATE" (the only one right now, btw).
Balance like you notice is also a good point right now, if you were able to wind without manipulation 2 times, I suspect you will able to win every time now.! Seriously, this will depend on how to organize player actions: I have some ideas, but I like also to read some suggestions too. Regarding rebellions, I have to work on it to make less common event, but depends on food, like you notice.
Investigation are based on clues: every action player mades in a city create small clues in that city. From time to time, there is a little chance for every npc to follow this clues and rise global awarness level (until defeat). Is a simple system I've designed to keep play into a loop (do action -> create clues -> uncover knolwedge before global awarness go too much high), but is not working fully because player is not fully aware on how much clues are left behind, where and which npcs are more interested in investigation or not. For example, is a nice idea for a "corrupted" npc (I mean focus + calling ) to start investigation ?
Thanks for try my prototype, really important for me! And about TWS, you are right, at least you can play this prototype and provide feedback: I strongly believe in this kind of approach an encourage you to "spread the word" about Infiltration to any people you think could be interested, my hope is not to create a replacement to TWS, but instead an interesting game (with working demo!) with clear mechanics and gameplay balanced enough to be fun. For me fun in this kind of games is to force the world to follow your rules and actions, using manipulations and so on, but also to give players this "level of power" they need to understand to what is going on and from your report, you get the whole idea, so thanks for report!